# HR & Policy Helpdesk: done-for-you AI automation by BufferSol

> A done-for-you HR and policy helpdesk is an AI agent that answers employee questions in Slack, Teams, email or your HR portal using your own handbook, benefits guides and HRIS data. It answers routine questions about leave balances, pay dates, benefits and policies, with a link to the source. It hands anything sensitive, such as complaints, medical leave or pay disputes, to a named HR person with the context attached. BufferSol builds, connects and runs it for you.

- Canonical: https://buffersoltech.com/done-for-you/automations/hr-helpdesk
- Industries: Hospitality
- Provider: BufferSol Technologies (New York; serving the US, UK, Ireland, Canada and the EU)
- Timeline: live in 3 to 6 weeks
- Pricing: quoted after a short scoping call

## Employees get policy, PTO and benefits answers in minutes, HR keeps the hard cases

**Who it is for:** HR teams of one to twenty people supporting hundreds or thousands of employees, often across several states or countries, who answer the same policy and benefits questions every day.

### Signs you need it
- The HR inbox is mostly questions already answered in the handbook.
- Open enrollment turns HR into a call center for a month.
- Employees ask managers instead of HR, and get different answers.
- You can't say which questions come up most or how long replies take.
- Questions bounce between HR, payroll, the broker and the benefits carrier.

## Business outcomes
- **Consistent answers, any hour.** Every employee gets the same answer from the current policy, with the source linked, whether they ask at 9am in New York or 6pm in London.
- **HR time back for people work.** Routine questions stop landing on HR, so the team spends its time on employee relations, manager coaching and the cases that need judgement.
- **See what employees are confused about.** A weekly view of question topics shows where policies are unclear, which benefits cause confusion, and what to cover at the next all-hands.

## How it works today
1. An employee emails HR or messages a manager asking how much PTO they have or whether a dependent can be added mid-year.
2. An HR generalist searches the handbook PDF, checks the HRIS, and sometimes calls the broker.
3. The reply goes out by email; the same question arrives from three other people that week.
4. Sensitive questions arrive in the same inbox as simple ones and wait in line.
5. No one tracks volume, topics or response times, so the workload stays invisible.

Hidden costs:
- Skilled HR hours spent retyping answers that already exist in writing.
- Different answers from different managers, which creates fairness and legal risk.
- Urgent or sensitive issues wait behind routine questions.

## How it works done for you
1. BufferSol loads your handbook, policies, benefits summaries, holiday calendars and payroll schedule into a private index, tagged by country, state, entity and employee group.
2. An employee asks a question in Slack, Teams, email or the HR portal. The agent identifies who is asking and which policies apply to their location and employment type.
3. For personal data such as leave balances or pay dates, it reads only that employee's record from Workday, BambooHR or ADP and answers privately.
4. It replies in plain language with a link to the exact policy section. If the documents don't cover the question, it says so and opens a case instead of guessing.
5. Questions about harassment, discrimination, medical leave, accommodations, pay disputes or termination are never answered by the agent. They go straight to a named HR person as a private case with the conversation attached.
6. Every question, answer, source and handoff is logged, and HR reviews a weekly sample and a topic report to fix gaps in the documents.

## What changes for the team
- **HR generalist.** Today: Answers the same PTO, payday and benefits questions all day from a shared inbox. Done for you: Handles the cases that need a person and keeps the policy library current.
- **Benefits administrator.** Today: Becomes the help desk during open enrollment, researching each question one by one. Done for you: Reviews the agent's open enrollment answers once, then deals with carrier issues and exceptions.
- **People manager.** Today: Gets asked HR questions by their team and answers from memory. Done for you: Points the team to the helpdesk and spends that time on coaching.

## KPIs we measure
- **Questions answered without HR:** Share of conversations resolved with a sourced answer and no handoff, checked against employee thumbs-up and follow-up questions.
- **Time to answer:** Median time from question to answer, compared with the HR inbox baseline taken before launch.
- **Answer accuracy:** HR scores a weekly random sample of answers against the policy; any wrong answer triggers a document or prompt fix.
- **Sensitive case handoff time:** Minutes from a sensitive question to a named HR owner picking up the case.
- **Top unanswered topics:** Questions the documents could not answer, grouped weekly so HR can fill gaps.

## Industry data
- 47%: of HR leaders spend four or more hours a day answering repetitive employee questions (isolved 2026 HR Leaders Report) ([isolved](https://www.isolvedhcm.com/blog/ai-agent-employee-self-service))

## Systems it connects to
Workday, BambooHR, ADP Workforce Now, HiBob, SharePoint, Google Drive, Slack, Microsoft Teams, Zendesk, ServiceNow HR Service Delivery

## Guardrails
- Sensitive topics (harassment, discrimination, medical and family leave, accommodations, pay disputes, termination) always go to a person and are never answered by the agent.
- Answers come only from documents HR has approved; if the documents are silent, the agent says it doesn't know and opens a case.
- Personal records are read only for the employee asking, with access checked against your identity provider every time.
- Conversations are stored in your tenant with retention rules HR sets, and HR can review or delete any thread.
- Every answer shows its source, so employees and HR can check it.

## What teams say about this work
- Nearly half of HR leaders say they spend four or more hours a day answering repetitive employee questions. ([isolved](https://www.isolvedhcm.com/blog/ai-agent-employee-self-service))
- Benefits teams end up acting as the help desk, researching each coverage, enrollment and HSA question by hand and replying to employees one email at a time. ([HCM Tech Advisory](https://hcmtechadvisory.beehiiv.com/p/is-your-benefits-team-becoming-the-help-desk))
- Shared mailboxes hide trends and response times, and questions get passed between payroll, carriers, administrators, brokers and HR when nobody clearly owns them. ([HCM Tech Advisory](https://hcmtechadvisory.beehiiv.com/p/is-your-benefits-team-becoming-the-help-desk))

## Delivery: live in 3 to 6 weeks
1. Week 1: discovery, access and a baseline of today's numbers.
2. Weeks 2–3: build the agents and connect your systems, with your rules and approvals.
3. Weeks 3–5: test on your real history, then pilot on live work with your team reviewing.
4. Weeks 4–6: staged go-live, training, dashboards and handover.

## Executive Ask questions for this workflow
- What were employees asking HR about most this month, and did anything spike?
- How many sensitive cases were opened this quarter, and how fast did HR pick them up?
- Which policies generate the most confused questions, so we can rewrite them?

## Frequently asked questions
### What happens when the agent doesn't know the answer?
It says so. The agent only answers from documents HR has approved and from the asking employee's own HRIS record. If those sources don't cover the question, it tells the employee it is passing the question to HR, opens a case with the full conversation, and logs the gap so HR can add the missing policy or FAQ entry.

### How do you keep sensitive matters away from the bot?
We define a list of sensitive topics with your HR lead, such as harassment, discrimination, medical leave, accommodations, pay disputes and termination. When a question touches any of them, the agent does not attempt an answer. It acknowledges the message, tells the employee who will follow up, and opens a private case visible only to the named HR owners.

### Can it handle different policies for different states and countries?
Yes. Each document is tagged with the entities, locations and employee groups it covers. The agent checks who is asking through your HRIS before it answers, so a California employee gets California leave rules and a UK employee gets UK holiday rules. If a policy has no version for that location, it routes the question to HR.

### How long does it take to go live?
Most HR helpdesks go live in 3 to 6 weeks. We gather and tag your documents, connect the HRIS and your chat tools, and agree the sensitive-topic list. HR then tests the agent with real past questions until the answers are right. We launch to one group first, review a sample of conversations, and then open it to everyone.

### What does it cost?
We quote after a short scoping call. The price depends on headcount, how many locations and policy sets you have, which HRIS and chat tools we connect, and whether you want case management in a tool like Zendesk or ServiceNow. You get a fixed-scope written quote before we start building, with no surprise charges added later.